User Agent and Assistive Technology Support Notes

Description

The objective of this technique is to ensure that interactive form
controls in PDF documents allow keyboard operation. Interactive
PDF forms are generally created using a tool for authoring PDF.
Form controls are implemented in PDF documents either as described
in Section 12.7 (Interactive Forms) of PDF
1.7 (ISO 32000-1) or as described in the Adobe
XML Forms Architecture (XFA).

Form controls allow users to interact with a PDF document by filling
in information or indicating choices, which can then be submitted
for processing. Users who rely on keyboard access must be able to
recognize and understand the form fields, make selections, and provide
input to complete the forms, and submit the form, just as sighted
users can.

Interactive form controls can be provided for forms created by
converting a scanned paper form to tagged PDF or by creating a form
in an authoring application such as Microsoft Word or Open Office
and converting it to tagged PDF.

However, documents created by authoring applications that provide
form design features might not fully retain their fillable form
fields on conversion to PDF. Complex forms in particular may not
have properly converted form fields and labels when tagged in conversion.

Using Adobe Acrobat Pro with forms in converted documents, you
can ensure that form fields are keyboard accessible and usable by:

Opening tagged PDF documents with form fields and creating
interactive PDF form elements with the Run Form Fields Recognition
tool.

Modifying fillable form fields, or adding form fields, using
Adobe Acrobat Pro or Adobe LiveCycle Designer.

If you have a form in a tagged PDF document (created by scanning
a paper form or using an authoring tool to generate tagged PDF),
you can use Adobe Acrobat Pro to make the form elements keyboard
accessible in the same page locations as the static form.

Use Advanced > Accessibility > Run Form Field Recognition
to automatically detect form fields and make them fillable.

The following image shows the Run Form Field Recognition tool is
selected to detect form fields in a document converted to tagged
PDF.

The following image shows the resulting form fields after the
Run Form Recognition tool is run.

You can use Adobe LiveCycle Designer to create new forms. In addition
to invoking this standalone tool from the Windows Start menu, you
can invoke it in Adobe Acrobat Pro:

Forms > Start Form Wizard...

Select the No Existing Form radio button, as shown in the following
image.

Clicking Next invokes LiveCycle Designer and the first page of
the New Form Assistant. as shown in the following image.

When you invoke LiveCycle Designer from the Windows Start menu,
the Form Wizard is available from File > New...

The New Form Assistant creates a blank form. Use the Object Library
in the right pane to select form controls.

You can also use LiveCycle Designer to create forms based on commonly
used forms templates.

Invoke the Template Assistant wizard from the New pulldown: .

Select Forms and then select an appropriate type of form. Then,
you can personalize the form by swapping out placeholder text,
graphics, form fields, and properties with custom objects that
you provide or define.

Example 5: Adding a text field in a PDF document using the /Tx
field type

The following code fragment illustrates code that is typical for
a simple text field such as shown in Examples 1 and 2. This is typically
accomplished by an authoring tool.

Tests

Procedure

For each form control, verify that it is properly implemented
by tabbing to each form control and checking that it can be activated
or that its value can be changed from the keyboard.

Expected Results

#1 is true.

If this is a sufficient technique for a success criterion, failing this test procedure does not necessarily mean that the success criterion has not been satisfied in some other way, only that this technique has not been successfully implemented and can not be used to claim conformance.